Poll: Young Americans Fear AI Job Loss Amid Economic Frustration

More than a quarter of young Americans believe they or someone they know has lost a job because an employer replaced the position with artificial intelligence.

A new Axios-Generation Lab poll of 1,075 Americans ages 18 to 34 found that 27 percent said they believe they or someone they know has lost a job because of AI, according to results published Thursday.

Research suggests that AI is responsible for fewer actual job losses than young Americans may believe, Axios reported. Still, the poll shows just how much fear and mistrust surround the technology among Gen Z and younger millennials. Those feelings appear to be tied to larger frustrations about the economy, politics and even how people interact with each other.

That frustration is especially clear when it comes to the cost of living. Thirty-six percent of respondents said they trust neither political party to bring down costs, compared with 26 percent who chose Democrats and 22 percent who chose Republicans.

“They're kind of thumbs-down on everything - how the president's doing, how the economy's doing, both political parties," Generation Lab CEO Cyrus Beschloss said, Axios reports. "AI is a pretty big disruptor; it's easy to point to one faceless thing as the cause."

Despite those concerns, younger Americans are not necessarily turning away from AI. In fact, most respondents, 71 percent, said they are at least as comfortable with the technology as they were a year ago.

AI chatbots are also becoming a regular part of everyday life for many young adults. Sixty-one percent of respondents said they had used ChatGPT within the previous month. Nearly half, 48 percent, reported using Google's Gemini, while 20 percent said they had used Anthropic's Claude.

Meanwhile, separate recent research suggests companies could hurt their long-term growth if they use AI mainly to cut jobs. Instead, experts recommend using AI to support and enhance employees, helping them make better decisions, be more creative and work more efficiently, according to the study led by Oxford Saïd Professor of Economics Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, published in April.

The approach could also help address growing employee concerns about AI. About 31 percent of U.S. adult workers fear job losses, while 11 percent are concerned they could personally lose their jobs to AI, according to a recent survey by Prosper Insights & Analytics, Forbes reports. Another 25 percent say they don’t trust AI to have their best interests in mind.

“It’s a classic manifestation of status quo bias,” De Neve told Forbes. “It’s far easier for an executive to look at a spreadsheet and imagine using AI to streamline what people already do than it is to do the heavy strategic lifting of reimagining how technology can produce entirely new value. Treating AI as a headcount-slashing tool might yield quick, visible cost savings, but it is ultimately a path of organizational contraction that trades away a company's long-term capacity to innovate.”